BY ANDY GARDNER
North Country This Week

CANTON -- Officials from the federal government and Oswego County explained to St. Lawrence County legislators that a proposed marine sanctuary would be set up to avoid disrupting commercial and recreational boating on the St. Lawrence River.

Phil Church, Oswego County administrator, and Ellen Brody, NOAA Office of Marine Sanctuaries Great Lakes regional coordinator, talked to the board’s Services Committee during their Monday, August 10 meeting.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is working with officials in other counties to create a Great Lakes marine sanctuary, which Church describes as “sort of like a national park, but it’s underwater.”

“The idea is to promote access … so that people can enjoy it,” he said.

There are currently two proposals for the sanctuary -- one that stops at the mouth of the St. Lawrence near Cape Vincent, and a second that would expand the sanctuary to near Hammond because of the wrecks of the Keystone and the America.

Brody said although the underwater wrecks are promoted as an attraction, there’s a larger educational component to the marine sanctuary designation.

“Many of the Lake Ontario shipwrecks are very deep and not accessible to recreational divers. It’s critical to our program that this is not a sanctuary that caters only to divers. A miniscule percentage of people are divers. This will only be successful if we do the education and outreach, bring the knowledge to people who may never get wet,” she said.

Legislator Tony Arquiett, D-Helena, was concerned that divers exploring wrecks could pose an obstacle for freight vessels going up and down the Seaway. Church said although boats are supposed to go 100 feet around a diver’s flag, that wouldn’t cause problems here.

“Divers are certified and trained by agents who drill safety into their heads. Like any sport, you have the knuckleheads out there. Most are very responsible, don’t want to be in peoples’ way, respect private property,” Church said. “They don’t drop their anchors and drop a flag out in the middle of a popular boating channel.”

He said one of the wrecks is on a shoal that boaters avoid anyway, and the other in the shipping channel could be accessed via a buoy line that starts outside of the channel, and divers would follow it down to the wreck.

“There are ways to make it a very mutually enjoyable resource,” he said.

Arquiett was also concerned about the impact of new shipwrecks being found.

“I have some strong concerns that if we got behind this, later on many of our folks using this river for economic advantages would find themselves without a voice,” he said.

Brody repeated the point that the idea of the sanctuary isn’t to restrict access, and the conversation with legislators is the start of a long process that includes taking lots of local input.

“These are questions and issues we want to hear from the users,” she said. “The term sanctuary is really a bad term … it leaves people to believe it’s off limits.

“I really want to emphasize we do encourage use of the resources. We want it to be done without damaging the resources. We’re not looking at an area that would be off limits to users.”

Legislator James Reagen, R-Ogdensburg, repeated his previous call for the marine sanctuary boundary to extend as far east as Massena.

“I’m going to urge your organization to expand its thinking to include all of St. Lawrence County, and it’s going to Robert Moses Dam is not very far, in nautical distances, and it presents us with an opportunity to tell a much better story about the history of the St. Lawrence River,” he said.

Brody said that’s a possibility, and even if it doesn’t happen, the educational component of the sanctuary doesn’t have to stop there.

“We don’t stop our programming and interpretation at the sanctuary boundary limits,” she said.